


Exodus

by DaisyIfYouHave



Series: Overwatch 2.0 [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Jewish Mercy, Just a lot of fucking feelings about Passover tbh, diluted through my girl Angela
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 14:05:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11314944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyIfYouHave/pseuds/DaisyIfYouHave
Summary: Passover is a story about survival, and a story about ourselves, and a story about the blood spilt to bring us to this moment. The Hebrews doubted Moses could lead them to the Promised Land, and Mercy understood.





	Exodus

The Hebrews doubted that Moses could lead them to the promised land, and Mercy understood.

Wandering, wandering. So much of Mercy’s life, she felt, had been spent wandering. And wandering in pursuit of what? Not only was she unsure she was wandering to the promised land, she was unsure, anymore, that she would ever knew what that looked like. How to explain, to people who did not know, the long march of a people surviving where they weren’t meant to.

It had been years since she had a proper Seder.

She looked down the table at her expectant team, her team that had become family, that loved her so that they insisted upon helping her hold a Seder.

She had tried to offer up excuses.

“I am out of practice, it has been so long, I will be having the hardest time explaining it.”

“We will help you. I only want to learn what is important to you, and I know this is,” Pharah had comforted, “And you will teach us. It will be wonderful.”

“Besides,” Dva had quipped, “we’re not gonna know if it’s wrong anyway.”

“I like ‘earing about your ‘olidays, Ang. Always ‘ave, much more personal that way, and everyone’s always on about ‘ow we need to ‘ave a wide cultural knowledge, aren’t they?” Tracer had grinned happily, leaning on the table.

Winston had simply smiled and nodded reassuringly.

And so it had come to pass. Tracer and Winston had been all day in the kitchen, pouring over recipes, trying to create something of Mercy’s scattered childhood memories. Dva had gone out to get the wine, although, of course, she said with a smirk, just because she wasn’t sure what anyone else would buy. 76 had, well, agreed to be social.

And Pharah, oh Pharah, she had created an entire low table for the living room, despite the short notice. It had not escaped Mercy’s eye that it was beautifully crafted, stained dark and sealed, the wood she had chosen peeking through with its intricate whorls and striations. It was a gorgeous and practical thing, like Pharah herself, and Mercy welled with love for her, and for that table she had never thought she wanted.

She was nervous, the night of the Seder. It is one thing, to be something, and to always be different from the rest of the world, no matter where you go. When you grow up with that feeling, it becomes intimate and known, and your difference slips in and out of meaning like a shadow. It is quite another to share that difference with others, to show them what you are, and to hope they understand.

It was not that her team was not kind to her, and was not understanding–this new Overwatch was the truest family Mercy had known since that fateful night in Zurich, years ago.

And yet, her mind wandered, like the rest of her, never finding rest.

She looked across the table at the collected family in front of her.

“The Torah teaches us there are four children who ask questions about the Exodus. These verses represent four types of children. We are all, sometimes, these children,” She smiled, thinking of the way her mother used to describe them, so eloquent with her words, “And they are all important.” She looked over at Pharah, who gazed at her with love. “The wise child asks,”

Pharah responded, not even looking at the piece fo paper Mercy had supplied. “What are the laws that God has commanded us?”

_First, do no harm. It was not a Jewish rule at all, but she felt it entwined with justice, justice shall you pursue, twin ideas circling around her like the snakes of her caduceus._

_It haunted her, wondering if she had made the wrong choice in the moment. Should she have refused Genji, and let him die, knowing how they had forced his hand? Should she have stayed with Tracer, and tried to help her, though they were using Mercy to hound her about the location of the Slipstream?_

_She lay awake, wondering if she had made the moral choice. Justice, justice, shall you pursue. Her father had told her it was the holiest obligation in Judaism. She had not been able to turn away Genji. She had not been able to help hurt Tracer._

_It had led her to where she was now, the choices she had made. The rules of Overwatch were made to appear virtuous. She could not follow Jack there. Jack couldn’t follow Jack there, she would think later, but he had been so stern, in those days, trying to convince himself that what he was was not at odds with the organization he had helped build.  She could not follow Gabriel, so close to Jack but so far, as they drifted closer in their mistakes in their attempt to be different from one another. And then Gabriel had died, and there was no chance for reconciliation._

_Mercy had simply left, like she left Tracer in the lab, she had simply refused to help any longer. Justice was not here. She would have to go find it. She had been seeking it across the desert of this world since she was 13._

_She ran her hand over her father’s siddur sometimes, wondering what God really meant when he asked these things of her. The lines seemed so blurred in the moment, and so frighteningly clear in the past._

_When she thought of saving a life, she thought of her mother._

_“Every Jew, my little Angela,” Her mother hugged her tightly as she sat on her lap, her fingers following the the letters she was only beginning to learn, picking out alephs and lameds in the text, “is like a letter in this Torah. Do you know what I mean?”_

_Angela thought for a moment, always a pensive child, and turned the question over in her mind. “I…I don’t know, Mama. They…they’re together in the book? Under the Torah?”_

_“No, “ she shook her head and smiled, “But what a clever answer from a clever little girl.” She traced her finger alongside her daughter’s. “Every letter, Angela, is different. Some hard, some are soft, some are silent. But all of them are needed. To lose one letter is to compromise the holiness, the completeness, of the whole Torah.”_

She looked back up at them, her eyes filled with tears.

_I do not always know the way, but I know I cannot lose even one of you. That is the law my heart has now commanded_.

She cleared her throat. “You must teach this child the laws of Passover, starting with the beginning, and ending with the laws of the Afikomen.” She looked over to Dva. “The wicked child asks,”

Dva looked down at the piece of paper. “What does this ritual mean to you?”

_“What does it mean, if we are becoming our enemies?” Mercy looked across the table at the redhead sipping whiskey in front of her. “We are Jewish. We’re merciful.” She shook her head. “That, I think is beautiful.”_

_“What’s it mean if we’re dead?” She set down the glass, and though it was not intentionally slammed, the sound still reverberated through the half-empty bar._

_Yael was an American, hard and mercenary and wild, raised in the dust and the tall grass of the high plains, and she stretched her name out long like they do in those places. She ran with the Deadlock Gang, and she ran in Mercy’s temple, and neither of these seemed to be a contradiction to her. She protected Jewish lives with her work, and that, to her, was pursuing justice._

_Mercy did not agree with her, but she envied deeply how Yael seemed to know what justice was, and where to follow it._

_She stirred her oversweet cocktail slowly. “Do you ever think, Yael, about doing something different?” She looked back up, hopefully. “You do not have to be doing this, if you wan–”_

_She leaned over the table, putting a hand up to quiet Mercy. “Let me tell you something, Angie. You get to be the right hand of God, because some of us are willing to be the left. After the crisis, they blamed us, because they always do when the shit hits the goddamn fan.”_

_“My parents–”_

_“Your parents were idealist Jews and they’re dead now, right? That ain’t me. They ain’t making Jews like Jesus, where I’m from, and I don’t turn the other cheek.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to be me, Angie, but I’ll hear no talk about how I’m meant to be you.”_

_Mercy wanted to balk that her parents had not been killed because they were Jews, but because of an accident of fate and war, but she remembered, like a sliver of light through the darkness, the way people never mentioned their Judaism in the many speeches given to their humanitarian work, as if that was an accident, but how happy people were to remind others that Jews had been a major part of the science that created omnics, and so, it’s not that they DESERVED it, per se, but, you could hardly blame the omnics…_

_And she demurred to say anything at all._

_Yael leaned back and took another sip, giving a sideways grin to Mercy. “I don’t wanna fight about it. Next round’s on me, kay?”_

_But maybe that was dying, she thought later, and often, over the years. To be what you are not. To become something twisted from itself. She had seen that, with too many people and too many times, and she could not imagine squeezing herself into something she scarcely recognized._

_To be a Jew was to be good, and she held this at her heart._

_But maybe Yael was right. Maybe Yael had sacrificed her life to save others, in a way Mercy could barely understand. Perhaps this was the strongest way to give one’s life, worse than any physical death. To do what others will not, and cannot._

_Maybe justice had many faces, and none of them felt like a mirror._

“It is…” Mercy nervously took a sip of her wine, “it is because of what God did for me, when I came out of Egypt. For me. God…sacrificed…much..for me.” Pharah touched her hand, and she nodded, smiling, “And then, the simple child says,”

“Not entirely sure why I ‘ave to be the simple child.” Tracer half-scowled.

“Popular vote.” Pharah quipped across the table.

Mercy touched Tracer’s elbow. “It is more like the…you know, naive child, who does not know things, not in the sense of that you are stupid–”

“This is not getting any more flattering, love.” She laughed and looked down at her paper  “It’s fine, s’ fine, the simple child asks, what is this Seder?”

_She lit a yahrzeit candle and sat by the window, shuffling through pages of medical textbooks, leaning against the windowframe, half-mumbling prayers to herself. It was like this every year, and every year the wind seemed to blow with the same high and lonesome sound, whipping around the bricks of the medical school and into her heart._

_She touched her father’s siddur sitting near her leg, like some long-ago memory, and she felt afraid to open it. The same day, every year, when her world changed, the wind whipping the same as it did that night, that Kaddish cry she would come to know by heart._

_There was a knock at the door, and she sprang to answer it, swinging it open slowly, wondering if the thousand crashing memories of that night might be behind it._

_“Doctor Kaplan?” It was no such memory, but only one of her professors, a bottle in her hand, coat slung warm around her shoulders._

_“Oh, Angela, I’m here on unofficial business, call me Tzofiya.” She did not ask to be let in, simply breezed into the living room, looking over at the candles at the window. “Your test went well, I see.”_

_She nodded. They usually did. She was a star, people often said, and Mercy had often thought that, yes, she was. Brilliant and alone in the dark._

_Tzofiya looked over at her, and gave a sage nod. “I am here,” she popped open the bottle, “because I know what this night is.”_

_Mercy drew the knitted shawl more tightly around her body. “Why are we drinking champagne?”_

_Tzofiya turned around and smiled. “Because you are alive, and you you are thriving, and for that we are thankful.” She poured a glass. “That is the Jewish story, yes, don’t you think? They try to destroy us, but they can’t, not all of us, and we prosper despite all of it. You,” she poured a second glass for Mercy. “Prosper despite all of it, and you can celebrate that and mourn them. Life is not all joy and it is not all pain, even on the same day, Angela.”_

_Mercy looked off out the window, holding her glass non-committally._

_Tzofiya reached over to her father’s siddur. “To look at all you have lost and see a light in the darkness, that is the most Jewish thing of all. We do not ignore the darkness, or say it is sunny, but we make shadow puppets by the light we have. That,” she poked Mercy’s leg, “Is what I hope you learn from this.”_

_“You are making it sound so easy.” She shook her head, her eyes so much older than her sixteen years._

_“It isn’t. Nothing in life is. But we are here to struggle, and to struggle together, and that is life.” She raised her glass. “L’chaim. That we still have it, and we still know how to laugh, thank God for that, if nothing else.”_

_“L’chaim.” Mercy whispered into the bubbles._

“God brought us out of Egypt. Out of the rubble.” She looked over at her small team, that was her small family, and thought of the rubble they had been brought from. Alone in the world, unlike anyone else. Disconnected from time. A child at war. Struggling to make a legacy of her own. Struggling with the legacy he left. “And because we survived,” she nodded, “ because we thrive, and we are going forward. Because they cannot break us. We celebrate. We commemorate.”

Pharah took her hand. “Because you are strong. I admire that about you.”

People said many things of Mercy. She was kind. She was intelligent. She was exceptional. But people did not call her strong, for she lacked the hardness that had been so valued in early Overwatch, and the cleverness so valued by Blackwatch, and she cried when those she loved were hurt, and losing a patient had never become easy. But Pharah saw her, in a way she could not even see herself, and she felt strong for it.

“There is a last child,” she cupped Pharah’s cheek with her hand, but her eyes were far away, “A child who does not know how to ask.”

_Overwatch was shut down for a reason, and Mercy believed in that. But that belief, that knowledge, made her no less rudderless in its absence. She had thought that Overwatch would be her calling, that she would find her promised land in the promise of worldwide peace._

_And now, here she was, sitting alone in a finely appointed office at a very prestigious university, teaching about cutting-edge technologies, passing on things that made the world unquestionably better, collaborating with the finest minds of her time. Being one of the finest minds of her time._

_And she felt completely empty._

_The worst of it was that she could not have even known what to ask for. Her work was fine and regular, and helped the world, and that justice she had chased should have been within her grasp. She went to temple every Shabbat, and she sang to God not knowing what she was singing for, and while it brought her peace, it brought her no fullness._

_I have chased you, oh Lord. I have chased you, and still I feel thirst. I have chased justice, but I cannot run fast enough._

_Was it shallow to wish for fulfillment? When that night had struck, her father throwing her into the closet under the stairs, the terrible tremor and shake, the loud boom of the life she had known ending, of her violent rebirth, she had stepped out of the closet, her home shattered around her, and seen a spray of blood above the door where she had hidden. She had been spared. But spared for what?_

_She would fast, and she would pray, if she knew what to ask for._

_Her lecture had gone well, and the day was bright, and Harvard was an excellent institution, and she should be thankful for all of that. Perhaps she would be. Perhaps she would take a walk, and try not to think of another Passover, spent alone, wandering, waiting for Elijah. She walked to the edge of campus, contemplating what sort of takeout she would get for dinner, when something caught her eye across the street._

_There was no mistaking Tracer for anyone else, even allowing for the blue glow of the chronal accelerator on her chest. Her particular bouncy walk carried her across the patio, smiling at nothing at all, her cowlicks soaring like sails, as she set her lunch down at a table. Mercy was halfway across the street before she realized she was moving at all, pulled toward Tracer, a bright smile on her own face._

_“Lena!”_

_Tracer looked up, and then, in a single motion, jumped the small fence of the patio and landed a few feet in front of Mercy, wrapping her arms around her._

_“Ang! God, it’s been too long!”_

_Mercy looked down at her, hands still on her shoulders. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were back in London.” She sighed happily. “It’s so nice to see you.”_

_“Aw, yeah,” she waved her hand, “Win’s over at MIT, now—“_

_“I had no idea he was so close.” She felt a bit embarrassed for the oversight. “Teaching?”_

_“Naw, you know how shy ‘e is. Research, mostly.” She gestured toward the table. “Come sit with us, I’ll share me chips, even.” She opened the gate to let Mercy inside. “That’s what I’m ‘ere for, really, is to get ‘is all clear. Or rather,” she sat down and looked over at Mercy, half-annoyed by what she was about to say, “to get the bloody RAF to accept ‘is all clear, I can’t be bothered with an all clear.”_

_She sat delicately beside Tracer on the bench. “You’re not instructing?”_

_“Oh, I’m instructing, all right, Red Air can’t ‘ardly turn me down, really, but it’s all theoretical, they won’t let me in the air, not without Win solemnly swearing that I won’t disappear mid-flight.” She winked. “As luck would ‘ave it, the Americans are completely mad, so I did a gig at Top Gun for a time, but,” she shrugged, “if it takes me 8 hours to fly to Win either way, I’d rather be ‘ome. You miss Switzerland?”_

_She folded her hands in her lap and shook her head. “Switzerland was a place I lived, but it was never like London was for you.”_

_Tracer looked over at the door. “Oi, Fareeha!” She waved, and then looked back at Mercy. “This is the other reason I’m ‘ere, brought one of the ‘elix kids to Winston’s lab.”_

_Mercy looked up at the door, and her lip unconsciously slipped under her front tooth. She was tall and broad-shouldered, her jet black hair glittering under the filtered light of the day, her features strong and proud,  a tattoo marking her cheekbone. She walked as if she expected the room to salute, and set her tray down at the table._

_“Fareeha, this is Angela Ziegler. Ang, this is Fareeha Amari.”_

“And you shall tell your child on this day,” she murmured, still cupping Pharah’s cheek, “you shall tell them, ‘We commemorate Passover tonight because of what God did for us when we went out of Egypt.’”

Moses never saw the promised land but from afar. Moses found his promised land in Tzipporah, in his people, and Mercy understood.

She looked at the room, filled with people she loved, and filled her cup of wine until it nearly overflowed.


End file.
